Previously I had one Keto Chow recipe and made one label for all the different flavors of Keto Chow, I would just change the big text at the top with the name of the flavor. Now I’ve done gone and made a recipe for each and every one of the flavors because there is a slight variance in net carbs, protein and other nutrients between the flavors.

My mom (who apparently dresses me funny, thanks for noticing =) bought me this suit back in 1998 after I moved back to the states from Chile. I’ve been down to below my “got married” weight for a while so I decided to try it on for kicks. Yeah, it fits! This is the equivalent of a woman fitting into her wedding dress since this was the suit I was wearing around the time I got married, though it didn’t fit as well then as it does now.

For comparison:

2014-10-25 – This was taken 4 days after I started Keto. I was already down 8lbs. My wife looks awesome.

I realized today that I neglected to add an entry for my 5 month ketoversary. Time to rectify that.

I started doing Ketogenic soylent back October 21, 2014 at the time I was 257.8 lbs. I started with QuidNYC Ketofood and later adapted a recipe by kennufs to make Keto Chow. As of March 21, 2015 – 5 months later, I was 214.7 lbs. If I keep this up I should hit -50 lbs. by the 6 month mark.

Time to post a video of mixing up a week of Keto Chow. It’s very similar to my earlier videos for People Chow and Ketofood. You can find the recipe for Keto Chow here. There’s also a video showing what to do with the powder, mixing up 3 meals here.

I mix all 7 days at the same time and do not have a problem with it separating or consistency in the mixture. It’s pretty tiring when people want to argue the merits of mixing this way so I’m not going to argue with them anymore =) I’ve been mixing this way for going on 8 months, never had a problem. You don’t like it? don’t use it! Go ahead and mix every day individually; but this works far better for me than mixing individual days ever did.

I got in the new foil bags I ordered. They’re shorter and wider than the other ones I was testing. They will fit easier into my boxes and are easier to scoop out of. I ordered a bunch today and will start using them for all orders going out as soon as I exhaust my supply of the taller bags.

The aim with nutritional ketosis is to get under a certain threshold of carbohydrates so your body is forced to start burning stored fat. There are some other benefits too, especially for people with metabolism problems and issues with insulin; most people use it for sustainable weight loss. To achieve ketosis you have to stay under 30-50 (depending on metabolism) grams of carbohydrates per day which can be difficult some times, especially when you are first starting keto and aren’t sure what you can and can’t eat. Using a ketogenic complete meal replacement like Keto Chow makes hitting your net carb goal much easier while assuring you’re getting all the vitamins, minerals and other essentials. It’s also usually less expensive than subsisting on bacon and cheese.

Being in nutritional ketosis has a bunch of benefits:

Your blood sugar stabilizes a lot, only going up and down a bit in response to protein. This will also cause changes to how your body uses insulin (plus it needs far less insulin). Along with all of this your body stops producing as much hunger hormones like Ghrelin.

With the change in blood sugar and insulin, your fat cells are switched from a “gotta catch ‘em all” state of hoarding to releasing stored fat for energy.

Your tissues store glucose coupled with water. Often when first starting keto and those reserves are depleted and the water comes out you’ll lose a bunch of weight – though it doesn’t happen to everyone.

a and c makes sticking with the diet easier. The abrupt loss of a bunch of water weight can really get people to stick with it (personally I lost 4 pounds my 4th day). Less hunger hormones gives you more will-power. In my own experience and in that of many others it makes dieting far more enjoyable – instead of “I’m always hungry all the time and am about to die!”

a and b makes it easier to eat with a caloric deficit even if you have no will power.

b gets your body burning fat stores, which is kinda the point right?

Now for the disadvantages:

There is a change-over period (4 days, more or less) where your body is going to revolt a bit. You’ll have cravings for carbohydrates and you will likely feel hungry quite a bit. Soon, however, your body will give up and switch to ketosis. After a while the desire for carby food may can completely disappear.

During this same transition period, if you don’t watch your electrolytes you may feel weak, disoriented or light headed. It’s often called the “keto flu” because it can feel like you have the flu. Your body needs more electrolytes in ketosis and it’s even worse while you are burning up that glucose+water reserve and dumping electrolytes. This additional requirement is why the Sodium and Potassium levels in Keto Chow are so high.

“Bursty” muscle action like lifting weights or sprinting often takes a hit with less glucose available. The upside is that endurance for other activities (after about 2 weeks) will go through the roof. It’s one of the reasons Ketogenic diets are fast becoming a preferred diet for competitive marathon runners.

If you can get past these three hurdles, your body will adjust and you’ll actually have more energy losing weight with fewer calories than they did eating normally – at least in my own and many other’s experience.

Just wanted to give everyone a heads-up that I won’t be shipping any orders starting Thursday, April 2 until Monday, April 6. Going to spend some time with the family, and then spend 2 days getting all the back-orders out =)

As I planned to do yesterday, I tried mixing the PB2 powdered peanut butter into my Keto Chow powder all at once while I was mixing a week instead of adding 12g into each individual meal. Worked out great! It simplified making the meals (only had to weigh once, instead of twice) and when mixed up fully there were less clumps (almost none) of peanut butter, comes out pretty smooth in fact. I like it.

I’ve thought about offering it as an option for the Rich Chocolate (it was also good in the Strawberry but I’m weird) but I’m still trying to work out the implications of adding it and the feasibility and costs. This is further complicated by the next bit of news:

Getting rid of the Ghetto

I’ve always been super open (regarding making powdered foods/soylent) about who I am, what I’m offering and all the information I can throw out there. I have been using standard gallon size freezer bags to package People Chow and then Keto Chow. They were inexpensive, sturdy, easy to get more of if I ran out but the biggest feature that kept me using them was: efficiency of space. Because the bags are pliable and compact, I can fit 4 weeks of Keto Chow into a single USPS Medium Flat Rate box, two in a Regional Rate A and one in a flat rate padded envelope. It means I can ship stuff at a far lower cost to the customer and I consider that a huge win. But I’ll see criticism about the presentation often enough that I’m going to do something about it. Last night I bought a label printer and a bunch of 4×8 stock and whipped up a label for Keto Chow:

Hey hey, that’s much better already! From here on out, all packages I’m shipping will have these labels on them. But I’m going to take it a bit further: also last night I used the five foil bags I bought last week and packaged up some Keto Chow in it:

I didn’t have a heat sealer yet so this first group got ironed shut =). The sealed part is tear-off and there’s a zipper closure as well. They’re 5 mil thick (really beefy) and look real nice. My wife thinks I should put the label vertical but I think folding over the top half wouldn’t work as well. Incidentally, anybody have a source for a 2 quart or 3 quart bag? These hold a gallon and are 40% too large, hence the folded over top part. These bags to look MOAR better-er but present some logistical problems: first and foremost they take up more room. I was barely able to squeeze three into a medium flat rate box (that holds 4 of the other packages), couldn’t even fit one in a Regional A box and barely fit one into a padded flat rate envelope. This morning I noticed that I might have better luck with the “tall and skinny” versions of these boxes so I ordered a bunch (though the USPS is terribly slow getting me boxes) and I’ll try them out. I also ordered more of the foil bags and grabbed a heat sealer. Hopefully sometime next week I’ll be doing another round of tests. Ideally I’ll be able to keep the shipping costs the same but I’m not going to hold my breath, doubly so if I decide to do a peanut butter flavor which adds another 15% to the volume of the powder.

I cloned my Keto Chow Recipe and added PB2 to it so I could get actual numbers instead of hoping I was good with a calculator. I also put the specific nutrition info for the Rich Chocolate flavored protein powder since the different flavors have slightly different values. What I came up with looks really good.

Adding three 12g servings of PB2 a day adds an additional $0.81 per day. Coupled with the correct figures for the Rich Chocolate it appears to have 47g of carbs, 26g of dietary fiber giving 21g net carbs. That’s 9 more than PB2-less Keto Chow but still well under the 30g net carbs I’m targeting to maintain ketosis and continue my weight loss.

Tonight I’m going to try mixing PB2 into a week’s worth of Rich Chocolate to see if it mixes well or not and if it fouls my mixing container with the oils and such in the PB2. Should be interesting. My hope is that by mixing it into the powder I’ll get a better mixture. Currently when I mix up my Keto Chow I’m getting some slight lumpiness (isolated only to the peanut butter) since the PB2 turns into creamy peanut butter immediately on contact with water. By having the PB2 evenly distributed throughout the powder it should clump less. Again, the clumps aren’t really a bad thing but it would be nice to have it even smoother still.

Lastly: in version 1.0.1 I changed the “Freeda” Calcium Phosphate for DiCalcium Phosphate that I could source from BulkSupplements in giant bags. Well, about the same time I noticed a tiny amount of grit in my Keto Chow. It was only apparent if you chewed a bit on the liquid but I could detect the granules of something. I didn’t make the connection to the DiCalcium Phosphate until about a week ago when I decided to throw caution to the wind tasted a pinch of the Dicalcium Phosphate. Yep, finally found the source of the grit. I finally got the original Calcium Phosphate in yesterday and will start mixing with it again tonight.